s
are the forces that rule us as a nation. Mr. Bryan and Mr. Roosevelt
have both been called preachers, and the hold they have had on great,
though differing, parts of the American people is incontestable. If any
question on which you have to argue has a moral side, it is not only
your duty, but it is also the path of expediency, to make appeal through
the moral principle involved.

The chief difficulty with making an appeal to moral principles is to set
them forth in other than abstract terms, since they are the product of a
set of feelings which lie too deep for easy phrasing in definite words.
In most cases we know what is right long before we can explain why it is
right; and a man who can put into clear words the moral forces that move
his fellows is a prophet and leader of men. Moreover, it must be
remembered when one is appealing to moral principles that upright men
are not agreed about all of them, and there is even more doubt and
disagreement when one comes to the practical application of the
principles. We have seen in Chapter I what bitter division arose in our
fathers' time over the right and the righteousness of slavery; and how
in many states to-day good and God-fearing people are divided on the
question of prohibition.

But even where the two sides to a question agree on the moral principle
which is involved, it by no means follows that they will agree on its
application in a particular case. Church members accept the principle
that one must forgive sinners and help them to reform; but it is another
thing when it comes to getting work for a man who has been in prison, or
help for a woman who has left her husband. How far is the condoning of
offenses consistent with maintaining the standards of society? And in
what cases shall we apply the principle of forgiveness? In a business
transaction how far can one push the Golden Rule? Life would be a
simpler matter if moral principles were always easy to apply to concrete
cases.

One must use the appeal to moral principles, therefore, soberly and with
discretion. The good sense of readers will rebel if their moral sense is
called on unnecessarily; and even when they cannot explain why they
believe such an appeal unsound, yet their instincts will tell them that
it is so. The creator whose right hand is always rising to heaven to
call God to witness disgusts the right feeling of his audience. On the
other hand, where moral principles are really concerned there sh